Highly Important South African Paintings. The Collection of Jack and Helene Kahn

2007. Hard cover, 106 pages. Very good condition. Under 1kg.

The reproductions are of a very high quality, with many pages folding out to give a fuller view of works. A short biography of Jack and Helene introduces us to the collection's history, and is complemented by a charming studio photograph of the stylishly dressed and suitably serious couple. What is so charming about the couple, who never moved far from Sea Point and the city bowl is that they did not collect art for investment so much as love. Jack and Helene Kahn were not the wealthiest of collectors, nor the heirs to great fortunes. Jack's father ran the Orient Candle Factory in Roeland Street, which was close to what later became the 'Palm Studios', home to Wolf Kibbel and Lippy Lipshitz. They collected the art of their friends, and the catalogue documents their closeness with figures like Paul Du Toit, the reason for the 'large number of superb Du Toit's in their collection'.

The catalogue firmly places the Kahn collection within the history of South African art. Most of the artists are introduced by a text that establishes their place in the tradition of South African painting, often outside of European Modernism. Tinus De Jongh, for example, falls within a tradition of 19th century romantic landscape painting, 'subjects easily accessible to the South African public'. The catalogue emphasises that South African tastes remain essentially conservative, with the most 'modernist' influence perhaps being post-Impressionist. Strangely, certain works have no accompanying text, such as Lippy Lipshitz's Room to Let and Head of a Woman, whilst painters such as Stern have each painting extensively discussed and contextualised, supported by both biographical and academic texts. In fact the text is shot through with a kind of defensiveness around Stern's 'exoticisation' of her subjects. It is here that the book's status as auction versus academic catalogue comes into question.